There are two states of mind that must be satisfied before anyone will willingly stop smoking. These elements are called "Desire," and "Decision."

DESIRE: A want, crave or a wish for

DECISION: Making up of one's mind / a verdict or judgment

In order to stop smoking, one must have a DESIRE to quit. You probably want to stop smoking, at least some part of you does, or you wouldn't be reading this article.

In addition, in order to stop smoking, you have to DECIDE to quit. Since you haven't kicked the smoking addiction, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to quit smoking yet.

So what you need is to feel motivated to make a "DECISION" to quit smoking.

MOTIVATION, we all want to have it. The source of each of our motivations is what we accept as true. Think about it, if you did not believe that you would get hurt if you drank poison, then you would not experience motivation to be alert. If you did not believe that the gnawing sensation in your stomach meant that you were hungry, you would not feel motivated to eat.

When it comes to giving up an addiction to tobacco, people who are addicted to cigarettes need to feel a lot of of motivation to make the DECISION to give up cigarettes. Motivation is based on the thoughts that we believe. So you will need to DECIDE exactly which ideas will motivate you (when you start to believe them). Because when you feel powerfully motivated, you will stop smoking.

Thanks to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and self-hypnosis for motivation, it is a lot easier to learn how to believe these new ideas than you think. However, you don't believe the ideas that will motivate you to stop smoking at this point in time, or you would have already given up smoking.

For the purpose of this discussion, we need to define a few words.

DOUBT: Uncertain/distrustful/dubious - "maybe it's this way, and maybe it isn't."

BELIEF: Trust/faith/tenet - A state of mind devoid of all doubt. In other words, belief means, "this is the way that it is."

HIGHLY VALUED CRITERIA: What is most important to you, as an individual humanbeing.

When you believe that if you continue to smoke your highly valued criterion is jeopardized, you will feel the motivation that you require to stop smoking cigarettes. We call this is a negative motivator, because it is a belief that motivates by giving you dreadful feelings. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make decisions.

When you believe that if you do quit smoking, that which is most important to you will become enhanced, then you will also feel the motivation that you require to stop smoking. This is a positive motivator, because it motivates you by promising good feelings if you quit smoking.

The first job is for you to DECIDE what the most vital aspects of your life happen to be. Your most highly valued criteria are usually things that you cannot see. For example: Money would not be highly valued criteria, but the freedom, fun, or security that money can provide could be highly valued criteria. Write your list of highly valued criteria down on a piece of paper.

Next you need to DECIDE what you would need to believe to feel motivated to stop smoking. Here is the good news, sort of: Logic has nothing to do with belief. Things don't have to be logical for anyone to believe them. As a matter of fact, they rarely are. So don't worry about logic!

The format for your negative motivator beliefs will be: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, something horrible will happen to my most highly valued criteria."

Make sure that you frame your motivators in the positive. In other words, always state what you want or what will happen. Never state what will not happen. Eliminate the "not" word from the beliefs.

In this example we will say that your children's welfare is your most highly valued criteria.

WRONG: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, I won't be doing my kid's health any good."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, my secondhand smoke will give my children cancer."

Next, create a list of positive motivators. "I believe that if I stop smoking: (something very important will be enhanced)."

WRONG: "I believe that if I stop smoking, I won't make my children sick."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I stop smoking, my kids will be safer because I will eliminate their contact with the dangers of my secondhand smoke."

The next step is to change the computer codes in your brain to make yourself actually believe these motivational ideas. Now for a bombshell: Your beliefs have nothing to do with or what is real. Instead, your beliefs have everything to do with what your perception of reality is. In other words, it has a lot to do with the way that you see things.

Our belief systems are based in our unconscious mind. The uncouscious mind is like a computer. Computers do not reason. What goes in controls what comes out. To demonstrate, I want you to think of anything that you already believe without the slightest bit of doubt. So come up with a belief that gives you a good feeling.

For instance, it's easy for most people to believe that they love their kids. If that is true for you, make a mental picture that makes you feel that love.

I'm going to ask some questions, and there are not any correct or incorrect answers.

Is your mental image a moving picture, or a still?

Is it in color, or in black and white?

Is it close or far?

Is it focused or fuzzy?

Is it normally bright, overly bright, or dim?

Is there a border on it?

Is it borderless?

Is it a panorama?

It does not matter what your answers are, write them down on a piece of paper. These are the computer codes that your subconscious mind uses to indicate your feelings of belief. In this case they are the codes for positive belief, because you have chosen a belief that gives you an excellent feeling. You've just calibrated your positive belief.

All positive belief pictures are bright and focused. If yours are not, then you probably do not really have total belief. You probably have an element of doubt. So find another belief to calibrate.

If you think of something that you are unsure of, and you make a mental image of it, one or more of these computer codes (which we call submodalities) will probably be different. Similarly, if you have a belief that gives you a negative feeling, (a negative belief): one or more of those codes will be different.

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming we call these particular computer codes visual submodalities.

Now you will need to calibrate a negative belief. So repeat the same exact process, but do so using an idea that you already believe, that makes you feel awful.

Once you have calibrated your positive and negative beliefs, it is a simple matter to control what you believe so you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to quit smoking.

So, to summarize, using the above example: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, my secondhand smoke will make my children sick."

1. Become aware of how motivated you feel to stop smoking.

2. Make a mental picture that illustrates the above belief.

3. Adjust the computer codes (visual submodalities) of the picture to match the submodalities from your calibrated negative belief.

4. If you are right handed, move your eyeballs (and your mental picture) up to your left and hold it there for five seconds. If you are left handed, go up to the right. This will help you to memorize the belief.

5. Now sense how well motivated you feel to stop smoking. Do you feel more motivated? Do you feel less motivated? Or are your feelings the same?

By using this proceedure you can make yourself believe almost anything by making an image in your mind that illustrates your new idea and then adjusting your mental picture to make it match your calibrated belief images.

And if you have a belief that is holding you back, you can use the same technique to change that belief to doubt by changing one or two of the submodalities and memorizing it that way.

Now that you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to quit, you will stop smoking. A DECISION to quit means: I'm quitting no matter what it takes. If you are similar to most, you will not want it to suffer from withdrawal and you do not have to. Because there are several hypnotic and NLP methods that can greatly reduce, or even completely eliminate all of the discomforts of withdrawal from the cigarette smoking addiction. And you can read about them in my library of unique hypnosis articles.

(c) 2007 By Alan B. Densky, CH. This document may be re-printed as long as it is not altered and the author's name and clickable web address are retained.